This is a monumental book about what is regarded as the fastest animal on the planet (or flying over it). At over 500 pages, and amply and attractively illustrated, this is a tribute to and reference source about a marvellous bird. The brilliance of this bird is well captured in many of the photographs but…
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Guest blog – A Year of Mixed Fortunes for Scotland’s Beavers by Tom Bowser
Tom Bowser is the owner of Argaty and author of A Sky Full of Kites: A Rewilding Story (reviewed here). Argaty is a working farm based on the Braes of Doune in central Scotland. It has been home to the Bowser family since 1916. The farm has two aims: to produce food in an environmentally…
More on the risk assessment on gamebird releases
The risk assessment published yesterday by Defra, but presumably done by APHA, is vaguely interesting but not spectacularly well-informed. It’s not that well-informed because no-one has invested in studying the process of disease transmission of avian flu to, within, or from wild birds. So there is quite a lot of guesswork dressed up as something…
Bird/poultry flu update
Today I will carefully be reading this, Risk Assessment on the spread of High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 to wild birds from released, formerly captive gamebirds in Great Britain: Pheasants (click here), which was rather quietly released by Defra yesterday. My aim is to blog about this by the end of the day, but…
Sunday book review – The Diary of a Secret Tory MP by Anon
This book did make me laugh out loud. And that’s quite an achievement because it attempts to satirise the awfulness of the current bunch of Tories in Westminster whose collective awfulness is almost beyond parody. Almost, but not actually as this author does a great job in exaggerating the behaviour and callousness and making it both…
The inaugural Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year Prize
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Yesterday evening I attended a poetry award evening in the British Library as one of the three judges of the inaugural Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year competition. The winner was Linda France’s collection of poems, Letters to Katlia, as pictured above – and it was good to hear her reading one of her…
Bird flu update
Cases of bird/poultry flu in wild birds in the UK continue to mount and are at a higher level than last year. It hasn’t gone away. Numbers of birds tested as positive: in a previous blog (click here) I compared the number of records of wild birds testing positive for bird flu up to and…
This blog’s Books of the Year 2022
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It seems that I have reviewed 55 books on this blog this year – and a cracking bunch they were. Here they are in alphabetical order by author: When There Were Birds by Roy and Lesley Adkins – review Peak District by Penny Anderson – review Wild Green Wonders by Patrick Barkham – review The History of the World in 100…
Stephen Moss’s 2022 Round-up of Nature Books
Stephen Moss is a naturalist, author and course leader of the MA in Travel & Nature Writing at Bath Spa University. Here is his annual round-up of books about wildlife, nature and the environment. @stephenmoss_tv [Mark writes: where I have read and reviewed books mentioned by Stephen I have linked to my reviews]. For almost…
Book review – At the Very End of the Road by Phillip Edwards
I must apologise to the author and publisher of this book for carrying it around with me for months and not settling down to read it properly. I’m not sure why. It was partly that the cover didn’t engage me. It was partly that I’d never heard of the author. It was partly that I…